California's top court overturns gay marriage ban

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Rudey

Look folks, I didn't say what is or isn't right. I just am saying that you can't subjectively remove "morals" from certain legislation and keep it for others. It doesn't matter what the source of those "morals" are...bible, your mother, etc.

I'm totally grunching this total trainwreck of a thread (seriously, can a mod just rename it "lessons in logical fallacies"?), but it seems like we're getting into a cum hoc ergo propter hoc deal here.

That is to say, I agree completely with your first assertion ("you can't subjectively remove "morals" from certain legislation and keep it for others") while completely disagreeing with the second ("it doesn't matter what the source of those morals (is)"). In fact, it very much does matter - not only because there are (relatively) universal moral and ethical standards and there are standards from dubious or non-universal sources, but also because there is a stated dissociation from one source of moral relativism in the United States that precludes that from being the sole source of moral authority.

Let's look at it like this, since you keep bringing up the example: universally, barring exceptionally niche elements such as Satanists or whatever, people know that it is unacceptable and immoral (and unethical, whichever term you'd prefer) to kill another person. The reason is because that person has its own rights (which cattle do not share; cattle as we know them would likely be extinct without human intervention, and it is also a universal moral standard to separate people from animals in at least some regard).

This is not a strictly "Christian" moral. However, the overwhelming majority of anti-gay marriage advocates openly (and honestly, which I find very respectable) declare that they are relying on a strictly Christian definition of marriage. There is no universal sympathy on this issue, and the relative moral outcry comes from churches (and some synagogues and mosques).

The two are not akin, nor should they be in the eyes of the law - a strict separation of Church and State requires that the state enact laws that utilize a moral authority more universal than any one church (or even any majority set of churches).

It does, indeed, matter which source is used for "moral" lawmaking.